UC Outlook

Have you ever been in a situation whereby you sent the wrong content or email to someone, and you’re wondering how to retract it? While some mail services have offered the option which has turned out to be a life saver, some people are yet to know how to go about retracting a letter which was sent in error and has the potential of making them look bad in the face of the bosses, family members or acquaintance.

If you’re a certain Microsoft Outlook user, then this will come as a relief as the developers have integrated a message retract service or better still, allow you t undo sent messages.

The traditional way of sending emails involves you going over the content multiple times to be sure you’ve selected the right content to forward, while this article does not encourage laziness to any degree, it seeks to address the problem of human error which can crop up at any point, including in sending mail and its content.

The Undo Send button which has been enjoyed by Gmail users was incorporated into the system. The Google undo send however allows you a failsafe period of 30 seconds to make up your mind on whether or not the mail you’ve just sent is destined for the receiver’s box or otherwise.

The 30 seconds mark provides you with enough time to think through, gasp and rush over to the feature to retract what you feel might turn out to be a regret.

For the Microsoft Outlook, it gets a better as you have to navigate a maze to get to the button similar to Google’s yet not too direct to find. To Undo send mail, here’s how to go about it on your Microsoft Outlook:

To clearly understand the working principle of the Microsoft outlook’s Undo Send button, a quick overview of the Gmail’s feature will help you understand how and why the button on outlook works this way.

On your Google Mail, otherwise called Gmail, to get to the Undo Send button, you must first enable the feature and then proceed to set for yourself a countdown timer which after it has been exceeded you can not retract any sent mail. However, for safety and other technicalities, Google set the highest time limit in which you can decide whether or not the mail was a mistake to 30 seconds which means you have between the send button and 30 seconds after to make an afterthought.

The setting, when enabled, creates an automatic delay time for sending your emails out of the box which in fact means you’re undoing the send and not retracting from the recipient’s mail.

With the Gmail feature entirely understood, the Microsoft Outlook’s incorporation works in a similar way but lacks the directness offered by Google. In Microsoft Outlook, it I a two set process which in fact requires more labor than the simplicity explained above. Now stick with me.

UNDO SEND: HOW TO

The first step in doing this on your Microsoft Outlook is to set a delay timer in which holds your message in the Outbox folder for a while before it proceeds into the sent folder technically. By holding your message, it allows you ample time to change your mind and undo the sent mail if need be.

Here’s how to go about the first step:

Go to the “File” then the ‘Manage Rules and Alert” option after which you should click on the New Rule.

From this point, look under Start from a Blank new Rule and choose the “Apply rule on messages I send.” Take note not to add any other rule.

Proceed to the list of actions tab and choose the “defer delivery by a number of minutes” option where you can set your expected delay time between the range of 1 minute and up to 120 minutes. After getting this done, follow the prompt, select the “Turn this rule on set” option and save the update.

The second step in the series involves you undoing the sent email in case you mistakenly hit the send button.

To do this, navigate to your Outbox folder where the delayed message is stored for the number of minutes you’ve preset from the first step above. Once in the Outbox folder, locate the message which needs to be retracted or undone, you can from here decide to edit the message som more by dragging it into your Draft folder or by deleting it from the outbox folder. However, one of the quickest ways of getting the undo send done is to switch your connection off or t hit the Work Offline button located under the Send/Receive tab.

The Microsoft Outlook undo send button, however, is not available to everyone as the feature is lacking in the Outlook Mac app. The integration is only available to the Outlook for Windows 2016, 2013, through to 2010.